This invention relates to a wagering game of chance, and in particular, a game in which game participants advance on the basis of a drawing of randomly selected elements.
In a typical lottery-type game, the components of a winning combination of game pieces are randomly selected. Since the random selection of components in a lottery-type game occurs in a linear fashion, players are rapidly excluded during play of the game from winning the top prize awarded for matching all or most of the components selected. In such a lottery-type game, the odds of a particular player winning the top prize are usually low, while the payouts to a small number of winning players may be large.
In a typical keno-type game, more winning components than are needed by a player to win the top prize of the game are randomly selected. Thus, a player can lack some quantity of the randomly selected components and still win the top prize. For example, the player may select 10 elements from a field of 80 elements, while 20 elements are drawn from the field of 80 elements as the winning components. In this case, a player may be lacking 10 of the 20 elements selected as winning components and still win the top prize.
Another type of game is a racing game, in which each racing element competes against a clock or timer to reach a finish line. See U.S. Pat. No. 5,560,603. In such a game, all racing elements start at the same specified time. Players usually place bets on which racing element will win the race at the start of the game.